So long, 2020 .... it has been good to know you

This is the Christmas ornamentation which has adorned my dining room table throughout the holiday season. It is, to me, sort of an elegance reflected through simplicity. As Emily Dickinson wrote: "How happy is the little stone .... In casual simplicity ...."

Happy New Year ....

Given the negatives of 2020 when compared to the positives, on the surface the headline here might seem a bit out of place.

Allow me to explain.

Someone once said words to this effect. "Any year you have seen from start to finish is a good year in my book."

Well, I agree, it is. The year has been a good one in my book, too.

Incidentally, my gift to you is having blocked comments, so you are able to arrive and to depart without a second thought.

Four videos are offered today for you to pick and choose among -- or, if you wish, to ignore. Read whatever symbolism you will into that.

The first is Bon Jovi performing "New Year's Day." It is no secret I like the band and its music, and I like Jon-boy even better because his mama and his poppa met when they both were in the Marine Corps. I did use this video to greet the New Year once before, and probably will again. My body is landlocked in the middle of the North American continent, but the visuals reveal where my mind and spirit wish to be ....

The second is Diana Ross and the Supremes performing "I Hear a Symphony." There is a story about a man being asked back in the 1960s which girl group he liked most. His reply was: "The only girl group, the Supremes." Asked the same question in 2020, his reply was: "Still the only girl group, the Supremes." Some might argue that point .... I will not.

The third is Gabriella Quevedo performing a Kiss piece, "I Was Made for Lovin' You." The only other Kiss song I like is "Forever." It undoubtedly is the melody of both and probably is the concept of longevity expressed in the lyrics which appeal to me. I chose this version because Gabriella knows her way around a guitar.

Rounding out the selections is David Bowie and his crew performing "All The Young Dudes" 20 years ago at Glastonbury. I did see and was dazzled by his Glass Spider show way back when, and have never seen another anytime/anywhere/or with anyone to match it. No further explanation will be offered ....

As we move from 2020 to 2021, enjoy this final day of this strange and unique year .... I hope and trust the coming year will be and will have been a "good year" for you and for those you love when we bid it fare thee well 12 months from now ....

I have no idea why this is here

                              Allen Ginsberg and friend .... 

            Two strays contemplating the mysteries of life ....

Thoughts .... as 2020 fades into history

Allen Ginsburg was many things to many people. His name should be familiar to most, if not to all. While he was a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he became friends with William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Of the three, Kerouac's name most likely is the most familiar. Kerouac wrote, "On the Road," among other things. The three evolved into the core of the so-called Beat Generation of the 1950s. Ginsburg has been dead since April 1997. He obviously is alive when this photograph is taken, so it obviously was taken before that date. It also is a black & white shot, which might demonstrate it once appeared in a publication. It also is a photograph of a photograph, which would seem to indicate it is my photograph.

I am not going to say when or where or under what circumstances this photograph was taken other than point out Ginsberg is sitting on the floor in a hallway waiting for something or someone, and that the dog is not his .... other than those things, the story behind the photograph will remain among the unanswered questions in this maze of life. I will say straight up I am not an admirer of the man, Ginsberg, but think he was a complicated and an interesting individual, and the poetry he wrote is worth reading.

For the curious and more daring among you, I would suggest reading, "Howl," written in 1955-56 in San Francisco and considered a literary classic in the sense that it broke through cultural barriers and challenged the American establishment. The operative word here is "suggest," not recommend. "Howl" is a rambling social commentary which often centers on the fringes of society -- poets, artists, radicals, homosexuals and the mentally ill -- to convey deep frustration, joy and energy.

There is a possible subliminal reason for having a post today. If that were the case, it would be to mention a lengthy article about former Saint Paul newsman and present-day writer Kermit Pattison and his first book, "Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind." The article is by Mary Ann Grossmann. She is retired from the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, but still keeps her hand in by coordinating and interviewing and reporting book news. Reading her lengthy, detailed article is something I do recommend.

My December 12 post was about Pattison and his book and the subject of his book is "Ardi," a 4.4 million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus in the process of evolving from Hominid into Hominin. "Her" fossil remains were found in Ethiopia's Afar rift valley and excavated between 1994 and 1997. It took Pattison eight years researching and writing to produce the book.

To paraphrase and partially quote a Grossman statement from Pattison,  he had to learn and understand all the sciences involved (at least eleven of them, by my count) and then "'disengage and write in a way that an intelligent lay person could read and comprehend. I had to span two worlds; making it a faithful look at science through a lens accessible to everyday readers.'"

I do have a copy of the book and, theoretically, I will read it cover-to-cover and write another post about it in more detail and, undoubtedly, with more opinion.

Included here are four videos, one with Ginsberg talking about Bobby Dylan and the other with Ginsberg and Dylan at Kerouac's grave in Lowell, Massachusetts .... and, two regarding Ardi, one with general information and one featuring author Pattison.

Carry on, if and as you so wish, baby ....

https://www.twincities.com/2020/12/27/st-paul-authors-fossil-men-is-a-tale-of-discovery-thats-anything-but-old-and-dry/

First star I see tonight ....

It should be needless to say, but I will say it anyway: This is not the view from my yard. In reality, I have no clue about when or where this photograph was taken. I found it drifting on the sea of blogs and it is reminiscent (to me) of Lake Superior on a winter day -- which I miss -- and I associate the rising sun and the ice with the Winter Solstice -- which occurs today.

An English language

nursery rhyme

Star light, star bright,

First star I see tonight;

I wish I may, I wish I might,

Have the wish I wish tonight.

Happy Solstice & Merry Christmas

The Winter Solstice often is called the December Solstice and has the fewest daylight hours of any day in the year and is the calendar start of winter in the northern hemisphere. For me, this event was at 4:02 a.m. today Central Standard Time (CST). By the way, being a Minnnneeeesnowtan, FramWinter runs from November 1 through March 31 -- reality vs. calendars, you see ....

If you happen to be immortal or verifiably a reincarnated individual and been around in 1623, you may have witnessed a phenomenon which occurs so infrequently that rarely is not an adequate word to describe the event. That was the last time the two largest planets in our solar system -- Jupiter and Saturn -- were in as close proximity to one another as they will be this night -- December 21, 2020. The only problem was that stargazing conditions at the time meant the astronomical planetary conjunction back then likely was not seen by earthlings. The last time such a close pairing was observable to the naked eye was in 1226.

Some might also note that we are a few days from Christmas, the currently selected date for the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The double planet view is known by some astronomers as the "Christmas Star" because of a belief that the biblical tale of the Star of Bethlehem could have been a planetary conjunction. Although around two thousand years ago, Venus and Jupiter were closest, not Jupiter and Saturn, as is the case for the "Christmas Star" of 2020. 

The conjunction of the two giant planets of our solar system make them appear to be one, although in reality they are hundreds of millions of miles apart. The planets actually have been moving closer together and been increasingly visible for some time low on the southwestern horizon and will be for several more days as they slowly drift apart again. The only time to catch them is during twilight because they set around 6:30 p.m. CST. 

Moving right along, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) has been staging performances here during the Christmas season for a number of years. I finally got around to seeing one two years ago and, again, in 2019. I had hoped to make it a triple-play, but the Coronavirus cut short that plan. There was a live streaming show a few days ago, but I passed on it. The TSO holiday extravaganza is terrific and I love it. To give you a taste, here is a video of the TSO performing "Christmas Canon Rock" with Chloe Lowery in Saint Paul on the 28th day of December last year. 

In the second video, students from Saint Olaf College of Northfield, Minnesota, perform Night of Silence / Silent Night while on a tour in Norway. The piece also features the Nidarosdomens jentekor, which translates to the Nidaros Cathedral's girls' choir. Finally, the third video offers an elaborate production of The Twelve Days of Christmas by The King's Singers and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

So, one more time: Happy Solstice and Merry Christmas and remember to look for the "Christmas Star"  when it arrives around twilight ....

Born too early for you to love me

What you see here, ladies and gentlemen, are an artist's conception of Ardi -- a young lady of Ardipithecus ramidus persuasion -- and skeletal displays of modern man and said Ardipithecus ramidus. If you are curious, read on .... if not, have a nice day ....

Two songs are included today: "Alone," a cover of a long-ago melody by the Wilson girls, Ann and Nancy, and a couple of guys who formed the band, Heart, performed by Floor Jansen of Nightwish. Note the amulet and the shirt and the rings Mrs. Hannes Van Dahl is wearing. The other video has two songs from the band, Boston, "A Man I'll Never Be" and "Amanda." The recording is pretty sketchy and rather ghost-like in appearance, which is appropriate because the singer, Brad Delp, chose to end his life at age 52. The piano man in the first piece and the main guitar man in the second is Tom Scholz, music and sound engineering genius.

Et tu, Ardipithecus ramidus

There are times when it seems the number of Hominids and their successors who once walked the Earth are more frequent than the number of breakfast food cereals to be found in the typical "supermarket" of today. Hominids were present as early as several million years ago, and various ancestors of Homo sapiens (which are us, in case you are not aware) appeared at least as early as 700,000 years ago.

 So much about life is guess work. Ever wonder, for instance, how many of us -- "we human critters" -- have populated this blue rock drifting in an ever-expanding universe? The number, according to an estimate by the Population Reference Bureau, is somewhere in the neighborhood of 108 billion. That number is based on the assumption that modern man appeared roughly 50,000 years ago.

Now, whatever you do, do not quote me because these numbers bounce all over the map, to put it in a colloquial manner. I also have seen the number for the appearance of modern man range from around 200,000 years ago outward to 315,000 years, as based on the oldest Homo sapiens fossils found to date. Such estimates, for sure, affect the numerical "guess work" for the total number who have lived. Frankly, I have no idea where the 50,000-year number came from and have no curiosity to research it.

No matter what numbers are used, they apply only to modern Homo sapiens and do not include any of the billions of "ancestral beings" who came before us.

Figuring out who belongs in what category and which came when is tricky business, to say the least. Take Lucy, for instance, as she is described in the Wikipedia:  "Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1, several hundred pieces of fossilized bone representing 40 percent of the skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis .... dated to about 3.2 million years ago ...." She was "unearthed" in 1971 in Ethiopia.

My interest in "this stuff" piqued when I read a few reviews of a new book about Ardi, another Hominid evolving into Hominin -- "Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind," by Kermit Pattison.

Again, "liberating" material from Wikipedia: "An even more complete skeleton of a related Hominid,  Ardipithecus, was found in the same Awash Valley in Ethiopia in 1992. Ardi, like Lucy, was a hominid-becoming-hominin species, but, dated at 4.4 million years ago, it had evolved much earlier than the afarensis species." Like Lucy, Ardi is a she.

Pattison is a journalist and writer who lives in Saint Paul. His work has appeared in a number of publications, and he has extensive experience traveling to "dig sites," including twice to Ethiopia.

Ardi was "discovered" by a team led by Tim White, who is considered one of the premiere and most controversial paleontologists on the loose today. He was among those who found Lucy two decades earlier. The discovery of Lucy, incidentally, reportedly was celebrated at a camp party during which a tape recording of The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was played again and again and again. The celebrants decided to give the skeleton the same nickname.

The origin of Ardi's nickname is somewhat less romantic: (Ardi)pithecus ramidus.

I have a soft cover edition of the book and have been browsing it while reading scattered segments as they attract me. At some point (theoretically), I will sit down and read it all from start to finish and (maybe/maybe/maybe) offer my own take on it. Some of the material here (obviously), comes from the reviews I have read.

That said, "Pattison deftly weaves strands of science, sociology and political science into a compelling tale that stretches over decades. His discussions of scientific theories and phenomena are sophisticated enough for the expert yet clear and understandable to the novice."

Well, ok, for now, if you say so ....

Pattison includes viewpoints of skeptics in his book. Rather than indicating a direct link to modern humans because of familiar features of some purported human ancestors, including Ardipithecus ramidus, he states this might be explained by convergent evolution .... which is to say the 4.4-million-year-old  Ardi group might have split off from the main stems of the ancient ape family tree before the last common ancestor linking humans and chimps, which is thought to have lived between eight million and four million years ago.

The opposition argument is that the path that led to humans was likely less "ladder-like" and rather "more bushy," full of evolutionary dead ends which branched out and died off before the human stem had taken hold. Such a model also suggests that finds such as Ardipithecus should not be thought of as human until and unless more evidence is uncovered.

My own thought of the moment: I wonder if humankind will ever know where "we" came from and the pathway "we" traveled, much less be able to comprehend it. Anyway, if "this stuff" interests you, now you are aware of it and I will feel free to drift off again in search of Neverland.

I will close with the final paragraph from a review by Stephanie Hanes in The Christian Science Monitor:

"By the end, the book leaves readers with a new sense of wonder at the origins of humankind. It certainly disrupts the outdated, simplistic view of humans evolving from apes, turning those diagrams of gorillas to knuckle-walkers to upright Homo sapiens into vintage imagery from a less scientifically sophisticated past."

So be it ….